Gustavus Hotels
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Glacier Bay
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Armed with sea sickness tablets we boarded a catamaran to be taken to Glacier Bay. The staff have been excellent and there are 4 people on board who give talks at night on various topics that relate to what we are seeing - Native Art, Glazier formation, Geology, animal life, birds etc - so it is very informative as well. They are very passionate and knowledgeable about their subjects and today have National Park Service Rangers on board to explain and spot wild life. We went through Icy Strait into Glacier Bay. At South Marble Island we saw sea lions lolling on the rocks and some Puffins sitting outside their nest on tuffs of grass on the cliff face. We went into Tidal Inlet and saw timber wolves. They say that this was a rare sighting as generally wolves don't show themselves and these were all black which is also unusual. There were 4 pups and two adults playing on the beach with a stick and then a fish. We watched them playing on the beach for about 15 minutes as dogs would play in the backyard. We also caught a glimpse of a brown bear and cub. We saw mountain goats on the side of cliffs. We headed for the Johns Hopkins Glacier. We knudged through the ice until we were quite close. We heard it creaking and moving and heard it crack - "White Thunder". We saw ice falling off the face (calving). Truly amazing stuff - the power of nature - it dwarfed the boat - 200 foot high face of ice - compressed by years of snow falls - now blue. Throughout the last 200 years, many glaciers in Glacier Bay have undergone massive retreat (although Johns Hopkins Glacier is advancing). Over 65 miles of new terrain have been uncovered - it was very barren and eroded mountains. International research is focussing on plant and animal succession and adaptability and we could see some mountains being populated by at first moss and lichen and then mountains that had been out of the glacier longer had alder and then finally the bigger fir and pine trees. We saw seals hauled out on the ice, resting which is also where they have their young. The small icebergs that were around the ship were quite dirty, containing silt, dirt and even brick size rocks. The rocks in the glacier caused the grounding down of the mountains to form the valleys. We saw horizontal lines along the cliff face where rocks had been dragged by the glacier. The waters around here are very cloudy/milky from the sediments (glacier flour) bought down by the glacier. Someone on the catamaran picked up a big chunk of ice from the sea to keep the drinks cold. We dropped the Rangers back at Gustavus and left the largest National Park thankful that these areas are left as pristine as possible. Back on board we were resting and again got the call - "thar she blows" and spent a wonderful afternoon watching the humpback whales out of our window. After dinner it became rough again as we entered the Gulf Of Alaska but the tablets have helped.
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